updated 04:30 pm EST, Thu February 21, 2008

FCC neutrality hearing

The FCC will on Monday hold a public hearing to discuss the ramifications of traffic shaping, it has announced. The focus will specifically be on the concept of net neutrality, an FCC policy which traffic shaping is said to violate, by dictating which services and/or websites an ISP customer can use. Panels at the hearing will be staffed by academics, engineers, lobbyists and politicians, in contrast to a workshop held last year which was mostly helmed by industry representatives and supporters. The hearing is scheduled for 10AM to 4PM at the Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The issue of net neutrality has come to the fore mainly as a result of Comcast, which is under investigation by the FCC for sabotaging peer-to-peer traffic such as BitTorrent downloads. The company has also been threatened with potential federal legislation, as well as two separate lawsuits, alleging unfair practices and false advertising. [viaBroadband Reports]